Frank Reynolds Trashmen

Throughout NBA history, teams and fans alike have been drawn to players who score. After all, a winning team is the one that scores more than its opponents, right?

Anyone who has ever played basketball, though, knows that a player can do many things other than scoring to help his team win. Setting good picks, saving loose balls, and taking charges all help a team win; missing defensive rotations, improper floor spacing, and letting defenders drive by all hurt your team’s chances at winning. Those are just examples of non-scoring actions that impact the game, and yet, none of them are even tracked in a typical box-score.

Because of the value we place on scoring–and because it’s the most exciting and fun part of the game, for many–teams overpay volume scorers, we overrate them in barroom discussions over player-rankings, and their jerseys sell by the millions. Meanwhile, valuable non-scorers often fly under the radar.

Here at AGR, we like to celebrate those non-scorers. The players who do the dirty work while the stars collect praise and paychecks. The guys who are happy to clean your plate and lick it, too. Some people mistake them with the rough in which we find the diamonds, but really, they are the light that allow the diamonds to shine.

After bribing him with sausage-links and mysterious drugs, we convinced noted grimester Frank Reynolds to coach a hypothetical team every year of the league’s best trashmen. Below, we honor them with their nominations and praises with a link to each season’s teams.